A high-power commission headed by the retired Supreme Court judge, Santosh Hegde, will probe six encounter deaths in Manipur.

A
Bench of Justices Aftab Alam and Ms. Ranjana Desai passed this order on
a writ petition by the Extra Judicial Execution Victim Families
Association, which complained that over 1,500 fake encounter deaths had
occurred in the State in the last 10 years.

The
Bench said: “This matter requires a further careful and deeper
consideration.” It rejected Manipur’s contention that “the occasion for
this court to examine those cases would arise only if it holds that the
NHRC had failed to perform its statutory functions in safeguarding human
rights of the people in the State.”

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The Bench said
entrusting the probe to the National Human Rights Commission “will
completely dissipate the vigour and vitality of Article 32 of the
Constitution.”

The Bench said “Article 21 coupled
with 32 provides the finest guarantee and most effective protection of
the most precious of all rights — the right to life and personal
liberty. Any indication of violation of this right would put all the
faculties of this court on high alert to find out the truth. In case the
court finds that there has, in fact, been violation of the right, it
would be the court’s bounden duty to step in to protect those rights
against the unlawful onslaught by the state. We, therefore, see no
reason not to examine the matter directly but only vicariously and
second-hand, through the agency of the NHRC.”

The
Supreme Court said: “It is true that Manipur is a disturbed area, that
there appears to be a good amount of terrorist activity affecting the
public order and, maybe, even security of that State. If the police
version of the incidents in question were true, there could have been no
question of any interference by the court. Nobody can say the police
should wait till they are shot at. It is for the force on the spot to
decide when to act, how to act and where to act. It is not for the court
to say how the terrorists should be fought. We cannot be blind to the
fact that even after 50 years of our independence, our territorial
integrity is not fully secure. We request the commission to make a
thorough enquiry in the first six cases.”

The
commission, which includes the former Chief Election Commissioner, J.M.
Lyngdoh, and the former DGP, Karnataka, Ajay Kumar Singh, would also
address the larger question of the role of the State police and the
security forces and make a report on their functioning within 12 weeks.
If it was found that they violated legal bounds, the commission should
make its recommendations for keeping the police and security forces
within the legal limits without compromising on the fight against
insurgency, the Bench said.